Czarna gallery is located in an old apartment, on the second floor of a pre World War II building. Conceptually, the activities and the programme of the gallery are strongly connected to this domestic space and its interior. Preserving its original function of apartment, the gallery provides the opposite of the often cold sterility of the white cube space. The gallery’s residency program follows the form of this apartment/gallery concept, allowing artists to live and work in the space and occupy its realm as their home and their studio. The artists have the potential to see this process through to exhibition stage.

Artist in residence for summer 2008 is British artist Tom Ellis from MOT International Gallery (London). The content of his show is drawn from the book Tom Kultury, which describes in text and images the Polish cultural scene in the 1950s. The language barrier created by the Polish text means that Ellis can only draw on the most basic visual impact of its imagery. He describes the book as his ‘fast food access to Polish culture’ and his lack of real knowledge of its history as ‘the most powerful tool with which to enter the cultural context of Warsaw’.